grief and anger. >> they all have really good intentions for life and i'm just shocked to see that it could be easily taken away just by one person. >> what is unfathomable is jamie took a bullet and is dead. i -- i don't know what i do next. >> president trump, please do something! do something. action! we need it now. these kids need safety now! >> what now? some survivors of the deadly shooting are denouncing politicians. joining gun control advocate, demanding action from president trump. >> tell your buddies in congress, tell paul ryan mitch mcconnell and marco rubio, all the family men who care so much about their communities that what we need are laws, real laws that do everything possible to keep assault rifles out of the hands of people who are going to

shoot our kids. >> and divide and conquer, russian bots flood twitter on both sides of the gun control issue. what is their mission? >> russians are very big fans of our second amendment. they would like nothing better if we were shooting each other every day, which sadly we are. they view this as one of the fault lines to exploit. good day, everyone. i'm andrea mitchell in washington. as funeral services for some of the victims of the high school massacre are under way, friends and family are celebrating the lives of alyssa al hadef and med t dou meadow pollack, both killed by nikolas cruz. he was arraigned.

he is being leheld without bail charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. we're a wagts detaiwaiting deta trump's trip to parkland likely tomorrow. he leaves for a previously planned trip to his mar-a-lago resort this afternoon. joining me now, tammy leitner in parkland and sean henry, former fbi executive assistant director. tammy, first to you on the investigation so far and how this community is coming together. >> reporter: this community is coming together really in their grief. i can tell you there are still seven victims in the hospital, one in critical condition, there were some emotional vigils overnight. and funerals as you mentioned start today. investigators are still trying to piece everything together. they have conducted 2,000 interviews. to get a better idea of what happened in that seven minute span that nikolas cruz was in that school when he killed 17

people, we now know that he was able to slip out of the school with some other students and there was about a period of time that for an hour that he was able to roam around freely. he went to a walmart, to several fast food restaurants before a local beat cop who was patrolling alone spotted him walking around in a residential neighborhood and he picked him up without any problems. >> thanks to you, tammy. and to sean henry, how does the fbi deal with this? there are a lot of questions about what was noiknown, what w not known. i'm struck by the fact that there was that youtube and a call from someone in mississippi noticing that this man nikolas cruz said he wanted to become a school shooter. cruz wi with a very unusual spelling. >> i think the fbi will look at that and what were the actions taken at the time. i know according to the agent in charge of miami yesterday, he reported publicly that the

agents in minnesota had gone out and talked to the person who made the complaint. they said that they did day itae checks. whether they were able to identified a person named nikolas cruz, whether they were able to tie to other instragram and social media accounts which he had in his true name as well, that is unclear. i think that that is something that needs to be looked at. certainly we need to be in a forward leaning position and we have to take these allegations seriously. if somebody makes a statement like that, it has to be investigated. we've seen too often the social footprint that is laid out by these attackers in advance of these types of incidents. so that is something that the bureau will look at in how they coordinate going forward. one thing i will say, i've been saying this for a couple day, there needs to be a national way at a national level for these types of allegations to be funled so that they are investigated, there can be coordination at the state and

local level as well as with the educational community. and that we have accountability so we ensure that these leads are covered in full to their fullest extent. >> there is a lot of concern by some of the parents and some of the students as well that when the president was trying to comfort the community and the nation he never once in seven minutes mentioned guns. >> yeah, you know, i've heard a lot of people that were upset about that. i think what we need to do is take a page out of the terrorism playbook. after 9/11, there were significant changes in the law enforcement and intelligence community on how to handle terrorist incidents and allegations of terrorist attacks in advance. and the fbi and other agencies became intelligence-led, intelligence focus and much more proactive. while we would like to try to prevents these attacks, it is about learning how to detect the

attention and disrupt and mitigate them. there is one way we can have a significant impact on these types of attacks, it will require a lot of money and it will require people's willingness to give up some of their civil liberties and civil rights. the american public i think has seen now how devastating this is and it will require a broad coalition, a comprehensive review and a comprehensive plan that may require some relinquishment of certain rights, how intelligence is shared, how health care information is shared, how schools can talk to law enforcement and share allegations, et cetera. i think we have to look at this comprehensively just like we did after 9/11 and came up with strategies that have helped to disrupt terrorist attacks. >> it's also as you point out after 9/11 certain changes were made in the way our own intelligence agencies were able to access some of our data understandably. that has been controversial, but it has been reauthorized.

but tammy, what are people there saying about the fact that the sheriff says that he doesn't even know how many rounds were expended, so it is these magazines, it is these assault weapons. and the fact that the administration in one of its only legislative action actually helped roll back an obama era regulation on the access to some weapons by people who had been designated or known to have mental health problems. >> first of all, i can tell you i don't think that in any previous school shooting we have ever seen students come out so quickly and so loudly and speak out so passionately about gun control. this happened immediately. as soon as the shooting happened, these students from this school, they came out and they spoke out loudly and with tears and with grief and with anger. and even some of the lawmakers and legislators that we have

ha been speaking with, that was one thing they remarked to us. and this community is not new to these type of lockdown drills. this is a community that is very aware, very educated, both the students and the parents and the teachers. in fact the teachers tell us they have been practicing lockdown drills since january. intensely. just that very morning, one of the teachers told us that they had actually gone into a lockdown drill and over the loud speaker they had said all students go to your classrooms, lock the doors. this had nothing to do with the shooting that was about to happen, but it was a very strange coincidence. >> tammy leitner and sean henry, thank you so much. freshman chris mckenna actually came face-to-face with nicholas krooiks oig a cruz oig,

cruz, an eyewitness to the tragedy. >> i opened the door of the staircase, there the shooter was. opening -- or loading his gun, loading up his gun. >> what did he say? >> he said you better get out of here, things are about to get bad. so i ran out the door and told the security guard coach feis. >> and coach feis ended up dying. what are you thinking about that? >> i was shocked. he's the last person i talked to. and then i heard the gunshots go off. >> caden culpepper knew coach feis for a decade. i'm so sorry, we're also sorry for the grief, for the horror that you are all experiencing. >> yes, ma'am. >> tell me about coach feis. >> i just want to start with saying that my heart and my prayers are in the heart of parkland, florida with all the families who lost children and kids and sons and daughters and friends. just such a cruel -- in such a

cruel way. my heart goes out to everybody who was involved and to my brothers and family down there. >> do you still have family and others who are in the high school? >> yes, ma'am. i have a friend's little sister and little brothers who were in the school at the time and former teammates who now coach at the school. and still trying to wrap my head around everything, it is such a tragedy. >> tell me about aaron feis. >> coach feis was a hero, a father figure. he was a role model to all of us. he impacted and changed so many kids' lives. and mine including. if it wasn't for coach feis, no way i'd be the man i am today and would have made it out of dug what is or t douglas or the situation i was in. he took us all in and did so many things behind the scenes for us that nobody knows about. >> tell me more about his impact on you then.

>> i mean, coach feis was always going to talk to me from when i was 13, he was taking me to football practice, picking me up, paying out of pocket for me to play football. he made sure i had dinner, he made sure i was in class, he would check to me personally and told me when he was proud of me and told me that he was upset with me. he was always so honest. and he got tutors for me when i was doing bad in the class. and just the stuff that he did for all of us. i'm speaking for all of my brothers and all my family down there the things that he did. i don't even think he realized how much impact he had on all of us down there. he just was such a great man and someone we can all turn to. when we were in trouble, we could turn to coach feis. he never judged us. he was there for us. he just did so many things for us. >> what are you hearing from people at parkland now in the aftermath of this terrible, terrible loss? >> just such grief.

and it hurts me that i'm not down there right now. i'd do anything to be down there right now with my family and bro brothers. i'm getting phone calls from former teammates and former students about what is going on. everyone is trying to be so strong and i love how the whole city is coming together in such a tragic event. and i want people to really know the hero and what kind of person coach feis was on and off the football field. he impacted so many of our lives, so many people. and played such a big role and filled so much voids for kids. just so many kids would not be where they are at and where i'm at. he played a big role. he saw the man i was when i was 13, he saw the person in me that i didn't even see. and he helped me bring that person out. and we were speaking a few months ago and told me how, you know, how proud he was of me and just said that he knew, you

know, once i got past that adolescent stage that i'd become the man that i was and i thanked him for believing in me and being there every step of the way. >> so you're not at all surprised that he threw mts between t position between the shooter and the students he protected? >> absolutely. that just summing up the kind of character he has and if he could go back and do it all geagain knowing the outcome, he'd do it all again in a heartbeat. >> thank you very much for bringing your memories of this remarkable man, aaron feis. our condolences of course to all of your classmates, his students, football players and his family. >> yes, ma'am. eagle pride. that's my girl! that's it! get it, woo, yeah! mom! my game's over. parents aren't perfect, but then they make us kraft mac & cheese and everything's good again.

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the white house today telling nbc news that at least one top staffer has received a revised security clearance. social media director now has top secret level clearance which he received in december. this comes a day after our report that more than 130 staffers working in the executive office of the president did not have full security clearance as of november. but still there are many questions about what level of clearance some of the other top officials have received including don mcgahn, ivanka trump, jared kushner and sarah

huckabee sanders. as well as deputy press secretary raj shah. kristen welker is part of the reporting team on this story and joining me from the white house. first of all, there have been some clearances since november, but we still have a murky record on who has what level clearance and you have top level people, division heads in the nsc who are apparently attending meetings or not without full security clearance. we don't know how they are doing their jobs. >> reporter: that's right. and we should say another update is that sarah huckabee sanders and raj shah do have permanent security clearances at this point. so that has been updated as well since november. but to this broader issue that the white house is dealing with, more than 130 political appointees here who have not gotten their permanent status, and it comes amid new reporting by my colleague kendall who found that white house officials are asked to felt out a supplement to their security

clearance form which asks them if they would be subject to blackmail. i'll read you a bit. it says with as much detail as possible, please provide any other information including information about other members of your family which could suggest a conflict of interest, a possible source of embarrassment or be used to coerce or blackmail you. now, of course that is significant because in the wake of the rob porter scandal, of course he was operating with interim security clearance. we know that his two ex-wives who being a be accused him of abuse allegations which he denies, we know that they did tell the fbi one of them very affirmatively that he could be subject to blackmail and one of his second ex-wives said it is a possibility. so this was clearly something that was at issue for rob porter and more broadly now the entire issue of security and who has access to the nation's most sensitive secrets has now become a key focus here at the white house in the wake of the rob porter scandal.

>> and joining me now is jeff smith who used to be the top lawyer for the cia, has great experience in national security issues. jeff, let's talk about how they are able to do their jobs if they don't have these cle clearances. how can the general counsel, mcgahn and others actually review other people's security issues or attend national security meetings? >> it makes it very difficult and we should begin by understanding that top white house officials are the highest priority target to any foreign intelligence service. and the old rule in counterintelligence was you never do anything that would give a kgb officer a medal. and in order to make sure that our nation's secrets are safe, we have this very sophisticated system to try to ask the right questions, do the right

background investigations and be confident that people who have access to not just top secret but above top secret are honest, they have high in-telligritty, sound judgment and so on. and if we don't have confidence that they will live up to those stand darts, then typically we don't give them access to our most important secrets. it is very difficult to handling what the white house must be like now when a lot of people have been operating with interim clearances, some with not sci, and how much information do they get from our intelligence, foreign service and the pentagon to let them do their job. >> and we are still not sure that this sci clearance applies to don mcgahn who is the general counsel. >> would it be very difficult for me to imagine that he could do his job without as we say sci clearance. >> and rob porter, he was the staff secretary which is a

designation, a title that does not convey exactly how important it is in terms of seeing every piece of paper that goes to the president of the united states. we know that he said something to mcgahn about problems in his background back in january. we don't know exactly what he said, but we know from christopher wray's sworn testimony the other day that the fbi reported the problem specifically the problem with his clearance to the white house which had to go to mcgahn and the chief of staff if not the president and that they completed it in july. they were then asked to reopen it. but by at least july, they knew everything. >> the good news here i think is that mr. gowdy has said that he will really look into that. but you're quite right, the, quote, adjudication officials who actually make the decisions

to give clearances typically are white house counsel, chief of staff, the national security adviser. so it is hard for me to believe that they didn't know some of this information and were they asking the right questions. i don't know mr. mcgahn at all, but one has to ask whether he understood the gravity of the information that was reaching him about people in the white house staff who were not getting clearances and the reason why. >> and what is also concerning is that you have people who are division leaders at the national security counsel and these are not new people, not like the new deputy who has just been moted. so they can talk about backlog, but these key figures would have been the first people addressed by the fbi and cleared as quickly as possible. >> absolutely. i ran the transition at the pentagon for mr. clinton and the fbi made a special effort to get everybody cleared.

president clinton brought in as most do a lot of very experienced people. most already had clearances. this president has chosen to pick a lot of novices who have frankly not a background that equips them to do these jobs and many of them have not had security clearances and many have very complicated professional, personal lives where a lot of overseas activity and that just makes it very difficult for them to be cleared. it also in my judgment raises the question of are they sophisticated enough in the way the world works to really understand that they are a target and how will they respond when they get approached or otherwise are tempted to be too friendly to foreign nationals not appreciating the consequences of their action. >> the president has the authority uniquely to permit anyone access. >> yes. >> he can declassify information. but we've also been told that he was unaware of the problems with

rob porter until it was exposed recently. so either he said it doesn't matter, let's let porter have access to all this classification, and was aware of the problems, or he was unaware completely. >> i've always found that good leadership means no surprises. and the staff out to make sure th that the president is aware of problems like that. we don't know what happened, but it really is a tragedy and i hope we can get to the bottom of it. >> thank you. and kristen welker, i know you've been trying to ask these questions. there haven't been briefings for several days. we don't know whether the president took the initiative to say it doesn't matter and everyone else along the way could have access to this information. i also want to ask you about the president's travels and the hint from him today that he would be meeting with parkland families.

>> that was an interesting tweet. let me read to you and then do some analysis on the other side. the president tweeting i will be leaving for florida today to meet with some of the bravest people on earth. but people whose lives have been totally shattered. am also working with congress on many fronts. so two questions there. one, is he in fact going to be meeting with the parkland families today. the white house right now not giving any indication as to when those meetings are going to happen. we know that they will happen in the coming days. we also know the president is leaving at 3:00 this afternoon to head to mar-a-lago on a previously scheduled trip. he will be there for the weekend, that of course just 40 miles away from parkland. so we do anticipate that they will meet with them this weekend. this tweet underscores the fact that he is very eager to make that happen soon. so will it be today, will it be tomorrow or sunday, we'll have to wait and see. the second part of this tweet when congress, he says he is working with congress to do something. at this point in time, it is not clear what that is. we know he talked about mental

illness yesterday in the first remarks he made, he said nothing about gun safety laws. and there is no indication at this point that there is any type of legislation that is being proposed by either the white house or lawmakers on capitol hill in the wake of this latest shooting. >> and of course the budget that they proposed has cuts for mental health care in the medicare budget as well. and that is not being addressed. we have to take note of that. kristen welker, thank you so much. and of course again to jeffrey smith. and coming up, picking up the pieces. i'll talk to a history teacher there stoneman douglas high school about how the school's community moves forward. ways to lose stubborn belly fat. the roasted core wrap. 3, 2, 1... not cool. freezing away fat cells with coolsculpting? now that's cool! coolsculpting safely freezes and removes fat cells with little or no downtime. and no surgery. results and patient experience may vary.

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and we have this breaking news from the fbi. i want to read this carefully because it is quite astonishing. it is an fbi statement on the parkland shooting. that on january 5, 2018, a person close to nikolas cruz charactered the fbi's public access line. a tip line to report concerns about him. the caller provided information about cruz's gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior and disturbing social media posts as well as the

potential of him conducting a school shooting. i'm reading continuing from this fbi statement. under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life. the information then should have been forwarded to the fbi miami field office where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken. the fbi says we have determined that these protocols were not followed for the information received by the public access line on january 5. the information was not provided to the miami field office. no further investigation was conducted at that time. fbi director christopher wray said, quote, we are still investigating the facts. i'm committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public. wray continued, it is up to all americans to be vigilant and when members of the public contact us with concerns, we must act properly and quickly. wray concludes, we have spoken

with victims and families and deeply regret the additional pain this causes all the those affected by this horrific tragedy. all the men and women of the fbi are dedicated to keeping the american people safe and we are relentlessly committed to improving all that we do and how we do it. that concludes an extraordinary statement from the fbi acknowledging a major on error in not passing on a tip, a specific tip on a public access line to the fbi from someone would knew nikolas cruz and it was never referred to the miami field office. i believe we have ken dilanian. share with me your response as well. i've rarely if ever seen this kind of statement from an fbi director in response to an overlooked tip that should have been followed up in a major american shooting. >> i agree with you. i haven't seen anything like this either. it is remarkable, but it seems to have been a remarkable i thi

difficulty that the fbi and other intelligence agencies are having with this problem of the active shooter threat, of where somebody crosses the line. whether it is sort of islamic extremism or in this case just simply a mentally ill person who goes over to violence. and we've seen this time and again where in all these cases there were signs. and we don't have a system in this country where, you know, this stuff can be easily passed on and company here rently investigated. the fbi is saying obviously it should have happened in this case, but it is a system based on humans. human beings make mistakes. there clearly needs an overhaul of protocols here so the authorities know how to act and informati follow up on information. >> but this was not a case where the mother in newtown did not turn in her son. and where family and friends do

not report erratic behavior from someone. this is a hotline, a continue to the fbi at some level which was not referred to miami and i'm not sure of course you and i don't know where it was turned in, that cruz had gun ownership, he had a desire to kill people, he had erratic behavior, he had disturbing social media posts, which obviously were not followed up, as well as the potential of conducting a school shooting. it could not have been a more specific contin specific tip. >> and we don't know what would have happened had they followed up on it. it's not clear that they could have intervened in a way that it would have changed the outcome. for example in the boston marathon bombing, they did evaluate him and yet they closed the case and he commit the act. so this is a difficult problem that all of society is still

coming to grips with. clearly as understand in this case a clear unforced error by the fbi. >> and this is such a major error. tom costello joining us now as well. this tip came in on january 5, 2018. so we're talking about a recent tip. just as his behavior was potentially becoming more violence and more aggressive. >> us a laid oas you laid out, specific tip with specific details about why mr. cruz's behavior was so concerninging. and it follows not only the september incident in which there was this youtube post in which he claimed that he wanted to be a professional school shooter. they failed in that account. and i got to tell you, over the last 48 hour, we have heard from a lot of people who just simply don't understand how they could drop the ball on this. this is the fbi which says that they were unable to trace who posted that and yet they are supposed to be on the trail of

russian hackers and north korean hackers? if they can't figure out some kid in southern florida that posted a youtube statement stating that he wanted to in fact be a professional killer in a school environment, that really calls into question their level of expertise or commitment to the job as it relates to tracking down somebody who then would go on and mow down 17 children. and would one other note. not only diwas the fbi appraise of this on two separate occasions, but the sheriff's department had been called to the house on numerous occasions by some counts more than 30 times over the course of the past few years. dealing with a kid who was violent, was acting out, was violent against his mother, was violence against neighbors' animals. so the red flags here were up and were waving in the wind for i would think for at least a

year, maybe two years. even the school district recognizing that this kid should not be on campus anymore and yet with all of that, he legally bought an ar-15 and somehow the fbi never keblconnected the dot. and one last point. this is an fbi that as you know is already under siege by the trump administration for they have been criticizing their professionalism now for the last year. this further undermines the public's confidence i would think in this agency. >> it will become a political issue immediately. and with the president heading down there as well. people will seize on this. and as we were pointing out earlier to you, tom, that initial tip from the person concerned about what had been posted on youtube, nikolas cruz signed it with his name spelled nikolas test schls sch. n-i-k-o-l-a-s. that is not common. >> i agree.

this unusual spelling, and they still couldn't connect the dots? still couldn't go back and fill out what the isp was on it? i mean i think that that really calls into question whether they were really looking very hard at all. and then the specifics, let's just reiterate the specifics of what was called into the fbi on january 5. raising questions about his gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, disturbing social media posts and the potential of him conducting a school shooting. how much more specific does the fbi need to be than to get that kind of a tip on january 5? >> i should point out to the best of my knowledge also, tom, that there is no ban or bar in florida law against purchasing the ar-15 no matter what your mental condition is. that is part of the problem that many people are addressing. joining me now and stay with us, tom and ken as well, joining me now is greg pitman, a history

teacher at stoneman douglas. i know you've been listening. this is an acknowledgement from the fbi whom we respect and honor and rely on in counterterrorism and in searching for lone wolfs. but here they clearly overlooked a very specific warning as recently as january 5. >> yes, andrea, i agree with what you just said. it is disturbing and upsetting to hear that. but if we could take it one step back further, in florida, you can't buy beer, you can't buy alcohol until you're 21. but you can buy an ar-15 at 18. there is a problem with our laws. i agree it appears the fbi perhaps have again missed a tip here that they should have gotten, but if he was never able to purchase an ar-15 at least until a later age or at all, that would never have occurred. that is our bigger root of the problem going back to the gun law, obviously there may be a slip up here, but if he never had the gun, this would have never happened at all. >> and as your sheriff pointed

out in interviews last night, they do not even know yet how many rounds were fired because it is not only the weapon that is not controlled, but the annual know, tammo and the maga. the fact mr. -- first of all let me ask you where were you when all this went down?mmo and the . the fact mr. -- first of all let me ask you where were you when all this went down? when everything started, i was in my classroom 927 on the west side of the campus. ment the 1200 building is neefts of whe northeast of where i am. i had changed buildings. we thought it suspicious that there was a fire alarm at 2:20. we had already had a practice drill that morning. whether it is a fire alarm or a bomb alert, whatever type, we've practiced those and our faculty, our students knew what to do. we proceeded to leave the building as we should.

we went on to our area. and then another teacher told me that he actually heard shots and then someone else on the walkies were telling us code black, we need to move further away. and then the kids were getting live streams from other kids in the rooms that were getting shot within a couple of minutes. and they were starting to panic. and so then we're trying to keep the kids controlled and had to move about 1800, 1900 kids off the west side of campus, keep them from jumping fences because they were starting to panic. and that is kind of where i was at that point. but everything that we did, we did what we should have done. the kids did in general what they should have done. if the gun was never on chaampu we never would have had this issue and other future problems that i see. >> the shocking thing is that this clearly he may have well timed this. so you had kids at dismissal time. he knew exactly when they would

be exposed. >> he knew exactly what to do. he had been a student here. so at that time of day, they are opening the gates for the cars to go out, for the buses to come out. i don't know -- i don't understand uber from what i understand uber dropped him off at 2:19. i'm assuming that he came in from the senior lot. i'm assuming that without knowing because it was the closest lot to the building. it is a minute to walk from there to walk in. the two of the security people that were killed, athletic director and mr. feis, i think their security posts are in that general area, so they would have been the first to get there, which is why what happened unfortunately with them. and so he knew where to go. and then he proceeded in the building and got ready and pulled the fire alarm to make everyone come out into the hallways. he knew what he was doing. he knew everything what to do. and he knew again with the limited security personnel that we have where to go and how to

get in. and there is not enough money at any school in florida because of our wonderful legislature, governor and our congress and our president to address the security needs at any of the schools. this is another problem that i'd love to see congress, our state and the president address. along with gun control. mental issue is an issue, but that is not the only issue and they are avoiding these other issues, both our state legislature, our governor, congress and the president needs to address with additional funding for security and also ifs gif the gun never existed, this never would have ever happened. and the other mass shootings wouldn't have occurred either. how many does it take before we see congress and legislature and president do something besides now is not the time to talk about it. when is the right time to talk about protecting our most important asset in this country, our children. please tell me. i want to know that answer. because i don't know yo want the standard bs that we get from our

politicians. i worked on capitol hill back in the '80s. i know a little bit about politics. i worked for governor martin in north carolina. been a teacher for a while. but enough of this bs. we need action besides lip service. and going back and saying we can't do it now and, oh, on, if it is mental issue, mr. president, why are you cutting mental health programs 25%. what is wrong with this? get a $1.5 trillion tax cut that we can't afford but yet you can do these things. and we're supposed to protect our children with limited resources. money is not where the mouth is. >> i understand your anger. i'm wondering how are your students, have you talked to some of the kids about how they are doing? because grief counseling is not going to be enough. >> i have. no, it is not. and i don't know how we're doing it. i have good moments and bad moments. when i see pictures an people i know, it is good and it is bad. i don't know the plan. we have a meeting later today at

3:30 for teachers that want to go to discuss. i don't even know if we're having school yet next week. i don't know how we'll do it. at this point i don't know what the plan is. i'm sure there is some type of plan and we're all going to have to deal with it individually and together. i do say we've got a strong group of students. we have a strong administration and teachers here. the limited number of -- unfortunately we had fatalities, they are probably because of the people that we have on this campus were able to limit it. it's going to be difficult going forward. it won't be easy. but we'll need help, we'll need prayer, but we need more than prayers, we need action from our leaders to help make sure this problem never takes place again. and i think you've heard from many students here many of them are addressing that concern, that it does not stop here, that these students and these faculty members that died did not do so in vein, that we can stop this as a problem in this country. only place in the world this takes place. >> greg, thanks for taking the

time and sorry, no words can express our sorrow what you're experiencing. >> thank you, andrea. and sean henry rejoining me because sean, since we last spoke, we've had this extraordinary statement from chris wray at the fbi acknowledging that they had a specific, very specific tip on the hotline on january 5 about what nikolas cruz might be up to and didn't refer to the miami field office and they acknowledge that this is a major problem. >> it's more than a major problem. there is absolutely no excuse. i mean, early on when there was this post and the bureau said they were unable to identify nikolas cruz from that post back in september, when you get according to the statement by the fbi themselves that they have had credible evidence from somebody who was close to cruz, somebody who said he was violent, he was talking about guns, there were photos of him with guns, that he might do a school shooting, clearly that

requires immediate followup. that is the type of specificity we've been asking for for the last two days since this happened. that you need the public to come forward, you need them to bring intelligence so that law enforcement can take appropriate actions. that clearly happened in this case and somebody dropped the ball. it is inappropriate, it is unacceptable. and i don't know what to say. i've been on the air before and when appropriate defended the fbi with many of their actions. in this case, it is clear that somebody along the line based on the statement of director wray missed something that led to this tragedy or could have potentially disrupted this. and i just don't know what to say about that. >> and sean, you understand the institution and i've been covering the fbi for decades. but this is at a time when the fbi is very vulnerable because of the attacks from the white house and from the president himself. and it is completely unrelated to what they are doing on the russia probe, but this could

feed the public animus that has already been begginned up by critics of the investigation including the president. >> this no doubt that this will bring critics out. and what happened here is completely unacceptable, it should never happen. when a lead like that comes in with specificity that we're talking about the lives of children, somebody who has violent behavior, he has guns, that is something that has to be immediately addressed. that doesn't take away from the tens of thousands of successes that the men and women of the fbi conduct every single day. clearly that shouldn't overshadow this incident. but there is a lot of work being done to protect the national security in this country and the vast majority of the incidents are handled successfully. in this particular case, it is unacceptable and it doesn't bring back the lives of 17 people that were lost. and it has to be investigated. it will be investigated.

and at the end of the day, there will be changes made. but it is devastating to read what director wray said that they had specific information. you know, you and i were just talking within hour, andrea, about the need for a national program. i said there needs to be a place where leads come in. they can all be addressed in a way that ensure that there is acountability so things don't slip through the cracks. i think there needs to be a national program, similar to terrorism leads post-9/11. this is indicative of where the lack of a program like that leads to something being missed in a tragedy like this occurring. >> tom costello, sean is still with us. tom? >> sean is right. i would just make the point, and i know we're talking about semantics here. somebody messed up. i would proposed many people messed up because you don't have this level of specificity in a

complaint in january in addition to what happened back in september and just one or two people are responsible for messing up. here's what i'm wondering. are they overwhelmed with tips? is that why this fell through the cracks? you have to wonder whether there simply is so much it's like drinking out of a fire hose and they're unable to respond or prioritize? they always say see something, say something. yes, but that is incumbent upon the authorities then to do something. and it seems in this case you had many people raising red flags in the school, among the neighbors, his own family which called the police and now somebody very close to him who called the fbi in early january. i think you've got -- i don't want to say institutional failure but you certainly have a layer of failure here that is really disconcerting. >> shaean, as we've been pointi

out, this is a time in our country where we've had incredible divisions about law enforcement, about the fbi, the need to support the fbi as an institution, but also it being under fire. how are the rank and file, your former colleagues, dealing with all of this. >> i can imagine when they read the statement of director wray today that clearly lays out that this information came in and the fbi failed to act that they'll be as devastated as i am. i've seen people on the air emotional about what happened here. the fact that it could have potentially have been prevented just takes that to a whole other level and i imagine they're all going to be devastated because, andrea, the rank and file, every single day, 34,000 people come into work. their job, their mission, their passion is to protect the american public. that's why they do it. it's not for the money. it's not for any glory. they do it because it's what's right. and they want to help to protect our citizens.

when something -- and that happens in thousands and thousands of cases. there are many successes. but when something like this happens, it's just -- it's a punch in the gut to every single person. take away -- i mean you can't take away how the families feel who suffered this loss. you can't take that away. and there will be 34,000 fbi employees who will be carrying this on their shoulders because they're proud of their institution, the work they do day in and day out but they know this is a mark against them. and that is going to hurt a lot of people. and i'm just -- i'm astonished at what i read and the fact that this -- >> well, shawn -- >> -- wasn't completed. >> we have more breaking news. and this involves the mueller investigation. more indictments to be announced today. ken dilanian, bring us up to date on that. >> yes, the indictment is actually on the justice department website right now. robert mueller has filed charges against 13 defendants who are

russians related to -- essentially russian bots and trolls. the internet research. they've charged them with defrauding the united states of america. they assume the personalities of americans online. also charge with election related fraud. these are not anybody that robert mueller can bring into court, i'm told. these are russians. any of the americans named in this indictment were unwitting and are not charged with crimes. this literally just landed so i'm going to have to read through it and get back to you with more details. >> as you -- let's just reset the table here because we've been talking about the conclusions that you and i were both covering the other day that the director of national intelligence reported to senate intelligence committee that russia was actively still working to meddle with our democracy. we've seen what the bots have been doing according to the hamilton project. you were writing on that yesterday where they were trying

to exploit divisions over gun laws in the aftermath of this horrific tragedy in florida. what these bots have been doing is exploiting schisms, trying to undermine our democracy and create more divisions among americans. what you're talking about here is an indictment of some of these creators, internet exploitation experts who are connected in the past, we know, to russian intelligence, the gru, to the sr -- svr to other russian entities in the government. >> that's absolutely right. and one of the questions raised by the conduct you just described is what can the u.s. government do about it? this appears to be robert mueller's answer. he can file criminal charges. now will he ever get any of these defendants into court? that seems unlikely. what he's done is essentially named and shamed them. we've seen the justice department do this before in the case of the chinese and they've indicted -- they indicted five

chinese military hackers who will never see the light of day in a u.s. courtroom. but the point was to send a message. this is criminal conduct. we're filing these charges and it looks like robert mueller has done that here. but you're absolutely right. this is an ongoing problem that i don't think any criminal indictment is going to stop because it's so easy for people to assume false personalities on social media. we see every day, the hamilton 68 is a website that tracks 600 russia-linked accounts and they tell us every day which hash tags are trending by this russian propaganda operation. and over recent days the florida shooting because they're trying to sow division and discord and tweeting on both sides of the gun debate with an aim of essentially destabilizing american politics. >> and, ken, this is, as we know, it started in ferguson, as far as we know but it's been going on for several years. obviously, peaking in 2016. and continuing since then and

aimed towards the 2018 elections, the 2020 elections. a major concern as described to the senate intelligence committee only earlier this week on tuesday. they said -- dan coats said the united states is under attack. now i want to just bring you back also to something that adam schiff said. the ranking democrat on house intelligence. i was at the counsel on foreign relations interviewing him just a few hours ago today. and he actually surprised some of the people in the audience and surprised me as well. he said he blames the obama administration in part for not being more forceful against the north korean attack on sony. that the response was too weak against north korea. the response he also believes was too weak in the run up to the 2016 november outcome by the obama administration. and that the message to state actors like north korea and russia and china in particular,

also i presume iran, are that we're vulnerable and we're not going to fight back. >> yeah, this is absolutely a sentiment i've heard expressed from my intelligence sources on this matter. and part of the problem is this was kind of a new thing. this cyberwar that america is now engaged in against adversaries. it sort of dawned on us gradually and the obama administration was grapple with the rules of the road. and part of the problem is there is no doctrine as there is with nuclear war and other kinds of war about what constitutes an act of war in cyberspace. what's a covert operation? what's spying and theft? the obama administration didn't have a doctrine about how to respond in all these cases. in the case of the sony hack they named and shamed north korea but didn't really respond in any way we can identify to the north korean attack on sony. in the case of the russian election, they responded with some sanctions that many people thought were pretty tepid. and we should have that just yesterday the trump

administration surprised a lot of people by explicitly calling out russia for what -- for russia's participation, according to the americans, in a cyberattack that was one of the most destructive in terms of costs in history. it cost american companies hundreds of millions of dollars. that was a ransom ware attack that originated in ukraine and spread to western companies. the trump administration, this didn't get a lot of attention but they issued a statement naming and shaming russia for that attack. >> and let me just point out to our viewers and we're going to -- as we end the show. a 37-page indictment. you're going to be going through it. we pulled up one quote in particular from the indictment. defendants operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then candidate donald j. trump and disparaging hillary clinton. and this does not draw a connection to any specific collusion, we believe, on the part of the campaign, but we are now going to go through 37 pages

but this is -- >> that's very significant. >> you can see what it says is there's a crime. there's a crime has been committed in furtherance of helping the trump campaign. that's what that passage essentially includes, andrea. >> and it doesn't matter whether or not they can prosecute russian perpetrators or not. that is what is being alleged. thank you so much, ken dilanian. thanks to everyone on this breaking news. this concludes our report. and david gura is in for craig melvin in new york as we continue our coverage on msnbc. obviously a major breaking news day. >> thank you very much. i am david gura in for craig melvin. a grand jury in washington indicting 13 russian nationals and three russian entities in election meddling. ken dilanian still here with me. jill banks is with me. seth waxman, a former federal prosecutor and l